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SATA drive lettering sequence.

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4 replies

by trinilover

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I recently upgraded my old WD 80GB to a new WD 160GB SATA. I used the file transfer program that came with the new hard drive to copy all of my old drive to the new one. Windows boots up with few minor delays and problems. However, windows XP sees it as DRV2_Vol1(E) how can I change it to drive C?

4 replies

by josh

Normally once you load windows (from setup CD) and the hard drive becomes assigned C: , which stays permananent. I am unsure if you will be able to make this volume C: since of the situation you have explained. To change a drive letter, do this:
Right Click 'My Computer' and go to 'Manage'
You will see a list of things on the left hand side, look for 'Disk Management' towards the bottom and click on it.
To the right, it will show you your drives (CD/DVD and Hard drive) If you have only one hard drive, then it will be listed as 'Disk 1'
Towards the top, it will show your Drive under 'Volume' as E:
Right click the E: and go to 'Change Drive letters and paths', and then click 'Change' and select the C: drive.
Two things can happen at this point, it will let you change the drive letter, or it will say "Windows cannot modify the drive letter of your system volume or boot volume". At that point you will probably need Partition Magic to possible change your drive letter back to C:
Good Luck and post back with results!

by hal 9000

The only way to alter this drive to C: is to wipe % reload Windows without any other HDD connected. Once you have a working drive it is impossible to alter the drive designation and still have the computer boot off that drive.

Col

by sgt_shultz

you still have your old hd in there don't you? take it out and see XP recognise the boot drive as 'c' again. you will to copy the data off your old hd and reformat it to get it to fall in 'letter' order again.

by sgt_shultz

here is a snippet from an article about it from the www.wdc.com (western digital corp)website...
IMPORTANT: After copying your boot drive, shut down the machine and remove the old boot drive from the computer. Configure the drive that you copied to as the boot drive and boot the computer into Windows to verify that the copy completed correctly. This boot process will also allow Windows XP to assign a drive letter of "c" to the new boot drive. Once this process is complete, you may add the old boot drive back to the computer and format it so it can be used as extra storage or a data backup drive.

If the new hard drive does not boot to Windows correctly, the Data Lifeguard installation software may not be able to copy the data correctly. You may need to use a third party clone program such as Norton (Symantec) Ghost or Power Quest Drive Image to copy the data to the new hard drive

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